Landlab

For 31 years, a rumbling convoy of garbage trucks has brought load after load of waste to the 197-acre Spadra Landfill, piling trash into an imposing mountain in the rolling hills of the eastern San Gabriel Valley. By the time the County Sanitation Districts close the landfill about the year 2000, more than 18 million tons of garbage will have been heaped into three 300-foot peaks. The garbage has created a scarred wasteland of oozing fluids and methane gas.

Edwin Barnes, a Cal Poly Pomona specialist in plant and soil sciences, has been appointed director of LandLab, a 339-acre center at the university for education and research in the sustainable use of resources. Barnes has been acting director of LandLab for two years. Previously, he was associate director of International Programs at Cal Poly.

Edwin Barnes, a Cal Poly Pomona specialist in plant and soil sciences, has been appointed director of LandLab, a 339-acre center at the university for education and research in the sustainable use of resources. Barnes has been acting director of LandLab for two years. Previously, he was associate director of International Programs at Cal Poly.

For 31 years, a rumbling convoy of garbage trucks has brought load after load of waste to the 197-acre Spadra Landfill, piling trash into an imposing mountain in the rolling hills of the eastern San Gabriel Valley. By the time the County Sanitation Districts close the landfill about the year 2000, more than 18 million tons of garbage will have been heaped into three 300-foot peaks. The garbage has created a scarred wasteland of oozing fluids and methane gas.

I read with interest Anne C. Roark's article "UCLA Identifies a Major Source of Pollution--Itself" (Metro, June 15). Cal Poly Pomona shares UCLA's concern about the degradation of the environment. Furthermore, we are deeply committed to dealing with environmental issues as part of our ongoing university operations. Cal Poly Pomona has been one of the pioneers in the use of recycled waste water. In the 1960s and 1970s, we used reclaimed water to irrigate about 25% of the campus.

Seven years ago, Los Angeles County and Cal Poly Pomona made an unusual swap--land for garbage. The county's Spadra Landfill, which lies between the university and the community of Walnut, had reached capacity and needed more acreage. Cal Poly offered 45 acres if the county would play ecological ball--implement cutting-edge landfill technology and, when the landfill is full, give all 200 acres to the school. Why do academicians want a mountain of suburban garbage?

Graduate student Devon Kohen rolls her eyes at jokes about her new campus home, a developing solar-powered, recycled waste-using complex at Cal Poly Pomona dubbed "Biosphere without a lid" and built next to a mountain of suburban garbage. "It doesn't feel like a commune, it doesn't feel like hippie love," said Kohen, 29, a landscape architecture major. "In a way, we're in the beginning of a whole new thing."

First came the landfill. Now comes the landscape. And if researchers have their way, fragile oaks and native black walnut trees will soon sprout from a gaseous, 18-million-ton pile of garbage in Pomona. Horticulturists at Cal Poly Pomona are mapping plans for the tricky planting project at the 197-acre Spadra landfill when it closes in late 1999.

At Cal State Northridge, officials are banking on an upscale, Mediterranean-style shopping center beside the football stadium. Cal State Fresno envisions a truck stop, of all things, on a 69-acre plot where agriculture students once harvested wheat. Cal Poly Pomona hopes to collect greens fees from a nine-hole golf course.

Two months after Bob Suzuki took over as president of Cal Poly Pomona in July, 1991, a public school truant officer who socialized with the president was hired to promote the university in Asia and recruit students. Henry H. (Huchil) Whang and his wife, Jennifer, who was hired some months later, were paid more than $175,000 in salary and travel expenses at a time when Cal Poly Pomona was laying off faculty and canceling academic classes.